The Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library is the University of Michigan's primary research collection for the humanities and social sciences. Located on the Diag at the heart of central campus, the library is open to everyone, including all students, faculty, staff and members of the public.

The Hatcher Library houses an impressive collection of titles in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Western-language Judaica. The Library also holds a number of rare Hebraica texts.

Judaica-Hebraica Unit

The Judaica-Hebraica Unit is headed by the Irving M. Hermelin Curator of Judaica, the first endowed position at the University of Michigan Library, in the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library. At present, this collection includes some 53,600 titles in Hebrew and Yiddish, while Western language Judaica holdings number approximately 43,000. The collection is particularly strong in Modern Hebrew literature, Jewish history, the history of Israel, Judaism, and Hebrew bible studies. Annually, the library adds about 1,000 Hebrew and Yiddish titles to the collection and 1,500 Jewish studies titles in Western languages.

Notable recent acquisitions include the 5,000 title microfiche collection, Hebrew Books from the Harvard College Library; the ten-volume set Catalog of the Hebrew Collection: Harvard College Library, the Poalei Zion and Bund Archives microfiche collections; the 550 item Leo W. Schwarz Collection, which is rich in rare material on Jewish mysticism, hasidut, and publications by and for residents of post-World War II displaced persons camps in Germany; the entire runs in microformat of the Jewish Daily Forward and the Jerusalem Post and its predecessors as well as the Morgen Zhurnal from 1906 until it merged in 1953 with another Yiddish daily, Der Tog.

Special Collections

In addition to the Graduate Library's collections of books and periodicals, the Special Collections Library holds a growing number of rare Hebraica books and manuscripts including a 10th century Pentateuch, an 18th century miniature Torah scroll, high quality facsimile reproductions of the Leningrad Codex, the Rothschild Miscellany and Damascus Pentateuch, and papers of Yehudah Leyb Levin, a prominent rabbi in Detroit during the first quarter of the 20th century. The Special Collections Library is also home to part of the Leo W. Schwarz Collection, which is rich in rare material on Jewish mysticism, Hasidut, and publications by residents of post-World War II displaced persons camps in Germany.

The Frankel Center played a lead role in the acquisition of the following, which are also housed in the Special Collections Library.

Irwin Alterman Haggadah Collection

In 2015, the Special Collections Library received an extensive Haggadah collection that belonged to the late Irwin Alterman of West Bloomfield, Michigan. This collection includes approximately 1,800 Haggadot, and is said to be the largest existing at any public university in the United States.

Jewish Heritage Collection Dedicated to Mark and Dave Harris

The Jewish Heritage Collection consists of over 4,000 pieces of artwork, objects, books, and ephemera on all aspects of the Jewish experience, a collection that continues to grow. A database of photographs with full descriptions may be viewed here.

Joseph T. and Marie Adler Collection of Holocaust Materials

The Adler collection consists of correspondence, documents, posters, stamps, currency, and other Holocaust memorabilia and realia assembled by Mr. Adler over the course of more than fifty years.

Weinreich Collection

The Weinreich materials housed in Special Collections include manuscripts, personal documents, correspondence, professional papers, rare books, and audio recordings by various members of the Weinreich family.

Electronic Journals

The Judaica-Hebraica unit also provides access to a number of electronic Web resources, notably Index to Jewish Periodicals, RAMBI: The Index of Articles on Jewish Studies, and Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive, along with the following full-text journals and other serial publications: AJS Review; Israel Studies; The Jerusalem Report; Jewish History; The Jewish Quarterly Review; Jewish Social Studies; The Journal of Israeli History; Judaism; Lilith; Modern Judaism; Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues; Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History; and Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies; among many others.